


D E L I R I O U S (or: a lesson in want and need)

by Esasel



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Accidental Bonding, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Brother Feels, Brother-Sister Relationships, Coma, Curses, Dark Mark (Harry Potter), Depression, Dubious Consent, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Family Issues, Forced Masturbation, Forced Orgasm, Grief/Mourning, Hogwarts Astronomy Tower, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, In a way, Invisibility Cloak (Harry Potter), Isolation, Letters, M/M, Magical Bond, Mild Language, Minor Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Panic Attacks, Past Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Rape Aftermath, Self-Harm, Sexual Dysfunction, Sleep, Sleep Deprivation, Slow Burn, Spells & Enchantments, Suicidal Draco Malfoy, Suicide Attempt, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, to
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:08:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 8,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24866566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esasel/pseuds/Esasel
Summary: .While Harry trudges on the soles of grief and hides from the world as best as he can, Draco lives in perfectly hysterical denial of his overdriven nerves.Once they're bound to meet, as of course they are, the boys kick off a curse accidentally that will bond them in a curious way: If they don't touch, Draco will never sleep again, and Harry always..8th year slow burn.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Kudos: 64





	1. Chapter 1

He'll climb the many steps every other afternoon when the sun is dressed for sleep in gold and red, and when he manages to sneak away without anyone missing him too dearly. Of course he brings his Invisibility Cloak. He had it with him, too, back then. He puts it on and is away. Then, boldly, he sits in that brittle archway overlooking the world it appears, and his legs swing out freely where the railing has yet withstood each magical attempt to put it back together.

Harry is taking Pretending That He Doesn't Exist to a whole new level. He didn't think he'd ever want to, really. No, he doesn't quite want to. There's just too many other things he doesn't want instead. He also didn't see it coming that it would be the Astronomy Tower of all places inviting him back to such old habits. But it was here where – you know. And it appears that only here his unsatisfiable responsibility to be _happy now_ seems to stop.

There is a kind of humbling peace for him where he remembers the terror of learning that, sometimes, there's nothing he can do. Up on the Astronomy Tower Harry allows himself helplessness, and in a way, today, that is alright.

It's not like he wants to fall when he looks down. He just can't be disappointing Ginny for a moment is all, or worrying Hermione, or unnerving Ron. Harry looks down because it's distressfully relieving to not _be_ sometimes.

Well, almost not. It's called pretend for a reason.

A secret smile tugs at the corners of Harry's tired mouth: His feet stand on seven stories of freefall and he thinks they look so dumb as they dangle out from under his cloak. It would be curious if anybody noticed from below; a floating pair of trainers! But no one ever sees, and Harry manages that secret smile in a public privacy he somehow made his own. _He_ , imagine. Harry Potter of all people, hidden in plain sight.

Today will grow into a stormy night. Rich signs of that bask already in the clouds as their bellies slowly but definitely turn the purple of a beaten child. Terrible autumn winds chase their bitter wailing closer. Should a gust embrace the tower in its howl all of a sudden, Harry would be unwise to still be sitting in this dangerously open spot.

He knows that. He shouldn't take unecessary risks.

One barking rumble overhead takes him by surprise. His hands tighten their grip around the edge instinctively; fragments of stone come crumbling off under his palms which are sweaty in a second, making him slip a beat. Harry gasps from the shiver washing down his spine, and his heart bolts to his throat, but he's okay. He didn't fall. He's only got his hands scratched up a bit.

Even through his cloak he can smell the coming tang of rain. No drop has fallen yet. There was a storm lingering in the atmosphere back then as well, and it reminds him.

Harry will stay just a bit longer.


	2. Chapter 2

Stormy nights also bring him a visitor, and this visitor's reliability has yet to disappoint. As soon as lightning would be the brightest source of light, Harry hears cautious footsteps on the stairs behind him. Shoe soles sneak. Floorboards squeak. And someone's breath hitches with every distant thunderclap.

Maybe he comes to check for the sickly Dark Mark and its green pallor in the sky. Maybe he comes to make sure it's not there anymore. Or there again, forbid. But Malfoy doesn't work up the nerve to near the archway with the broken railing. Malfoy avoids and fixates Harry's edge like the maw of a Manticore.

He has no clue there is a floating pair of trainers hiding just out of his sight.

The git can't be scared of heights though. Harry decided that a while ago. A Seeker isn't scared of heights. Under his Invisibility Cloak, Harry sits and looks over his shoulder silently, watching his visitor pace one awkward circle after the other in the wooden shade of the room: As if an illicit summoning himself, Malfoy looks a little green, all of him up from the waist because there is no contrast to his face and hair and dress shirt wafting sinisterly through the night that eats the outlines of his nervous legs clad in black. He's half a phantom, quite literally. He doesn't have the guts, no he doesn't, to get closer to Harry than a heartfelt distance off, and Harry decided some time ago that it's a wonder Malfoy keeps and keeps surviving at all. He seems to make himself afraid of everything.

Since they returned to Hogwarts, they and Malfoy, too, Harry learned a few things about the git. Some that make it difficult to hate him now.

_I dare not mourn because the world is better off without you,_

said one of the anonymous confessions the students are encouraged to write down and put in the draw pot for anyone to draw, to read – to understand they're not the only ones having a hard time coming back to peace after the war. Harry had drawn this scrap of parchment and he didn't know the stessful, long-lined handwriting, but he knew of Lucius Malfoy's death in Azkaban the week before.

That, for example, is why he doesn't mind the storm-night pacing in the Astronomy Tower. Harry can share his hiding place with someone in need. Need of _whatever_. Whatever. It doesn't matter in the end, because hypothetically Harry isn't even there. Right?

Also, Malfoy doesn't ever stay too long. There is no calm in this boy. Give him a minute or maybe three and he'll get a look on his face, he'll kick a ten foot telescope or the like and he'll curse because _his toe,_ and then he'll scuttle off the way he came.

One time he made himself limp and milked a show from it, his wounded pride the only audience to entertain. Or so he must have thought. Harry got a stomach ache from stiffling what would have been his most liberating laughter since the day he hadn't died a second time.

When he saw Malfoy flinch to his breakfast the next morning, Harry felt as though a stone sank in his guts.


	3. Chapter 3

And there is Ginny in the morning. Ginny rises with the blaze of the sun. That ever flaming smirk on her mouth, she'll find and tease Harry from even the rearmost nook as if he were a drowsy shadow or a fluff of dust to wake, and she is beautiful hunting him so, Harry knows she is – only, she burns his skin each time he lets her touch him. Her kiss will melt the air he tries to breathe.

Their time together after the war was a summer fever dream that smouldered in ambush between them. Too bright, too hot to even sleep. Harry felt pressed flat under the magnifying glass of Ginny's anticipation which should've set him on fire. All it did, though, was it scorched his resolve until he was shimmering, unsteady, a mirage at best. She'd give him time, generous, weighty time to come around, but time only managed to make him sweat too cold for Juli, and Harry was so tired. Harry has been nothing but tired now that she knew she'd _have_ him. He, for instance, didn't know he had himself anymore and lay listlessly behind the burrow in a field of corn, its stubbles yellow and dry like the twigs of the first school broom he'd ever been flying on – while he could have been flying.

But he's flown before. It made no difference all of a sudden, to be flying or not.

Lucky that with autumn Hogwarts called and he would be forgiven another day, another week of distraction from everything that should be fine and isn't.

Just another hour now and then.

Back here in school, too, Harry mostly flees from Ginny. That is because she starts to grows impatient. She wants the next step, she wants the next level, an upgrade - dear god she wants so much and he _tries,_ Harry tries to be so much, but it proves to be tricky to live up to her assistance. Most evenings he'll think to himself that _no_ , he couldn't do with another try. Harry wouldn't have her shove the sly, warm fingers of her owning hand down his faded cotton boxers again, only to find she won't be able to warm him up. Again.

All these weeks, Harry hasn't been able to get it up for his wildly attractive girlfriend, and every other week makes this disability feel more surely like a permanent defect. He knows he wanted her before. Or he thinks he did. Only, he doesn't want so much of anything nowadays. To Ginny, though, he doesn't tell. He doesn't have the heart to debunk her ruthless hope just yet.

In all honesty though, he can't recall when exactly he started to prefer an arse cold night out with Malfoy walking his boot heels off behind his back to a lazy evening, cuddling his girlfriend in a warm bed.

Hem of his Invisibility Cloak in his fist, Harry presses one ear to the closed door of his tiny private 8th year bedroom, for all of them have been given one of their own, they were so few returning. Behind his door, he can hear the faint rustling of sheets and a stubborn girl's waiting sigh.

Leaving Ginny to fall asleep without him, again, Harry hates to find himself hoping for a lightning bolt or two.


	4. Chapter 4

He's not a flower that knows no rain, so it is fairly ridiculous that he must wither with each little storm.

This autumn's storms are many and scenic, just like his lofty heart should enjoy the surroundings of his fate to be. Alas, at night they tear at the eyelids, crawl under the skin and pull him feet first from his sleep, and every thought of his will shriek in the glare of a lightning bolt – piercing, silent hunters are the lightning bolts, out to strike him harder than the roll of thunder can. They even get to him before he's out to hunt them back, to glare them back – he feels them like a too long needle in the throat, he does, he'd do so even if he dared to vanish in the soot black Cabinet that's blind with no, no eyes at all.

Some people need not see the light. He _knows_ the light, and it is judging him.

Or maybe he just wants to cry.

Somewhen, he does not remember the pinpoint moment like a picture of the past in dramatic sepia, somewhen he managed to adapt to waking from the screams in- and outside of a dream, and he learned to walk the worst of them off. One can run from near anything, given there is the talent in you of never stopping long enough to look over your shoulder.

This talent sits where other people have a backbone, he was told.

It doesn't help him anymore anyway, because no matter what he will outrun, today, a storm will be ahead of him. His running so, ironically, drives him up to that place of unfinished business lately, of a story never told to its end. That will be because, albeit he feels like a relic that the future has abandoned, he is not anywhere near done.

Draco Malfoy is not done.

Insignificant, he never truly got the chance to decide anything on his own, to pull anything through with finality, and no matter where he'll turn today, he'll end up there again, back up on the Astronomy Tower, where, it appears, his final decision was made for him.

How profane to be lingering there. He remembers how he fled and never stopped long enough to look over his shoulder. He does so every other night, but it is no use because he will be back again.

Like he never really gets to choose if he wants to come or not.

But it's not like he hasn't learned a lesson. He knows now, well enough, that it is always wiser to think twice about what is and isn't necessary.

One cannot change what one cannot change. And there are other things to discipline himself about.

For instance, he does not necessarily need to speak his mind lest he draw unwanted attention. He doesn't need attention nowadays, no thank you. Doesn't need to be on speaking terms with anyone, for that instance. He gets his school work done just fine on his own.

Draco doesn't need the teachers' personal approval, too, because his work, especially this year, is too good to be graded too badly, and that one grade they can lower him out of spite would surely not ruin his future altogether.

Right?

Fine thing, as well, is that the limitation of ten spells per day, which lingers on his probation wand from the Ministry Of Magic, pushes him to stellar performances in both lessons and tests – he wouldn't get to try too many times, so why not do it right in the first go? That's right. Pressure excells.

Who needs second chances anyway?

The probation wand also inspires him to get much more creative and active in his everyday life. To have boundless access to his inborn magic, really, has proven to be not quite the nescessity after all, because Draco does have hands and feet. He has hands to shield his head from jinxes. He has feet, these adequate, quick feet, and he did learn to value them long before any vengeful Hogwarts student came to think of getting back at him: As stated before, Draco Malfoy has run from so much worse, thank you very much ( _you petty arseholes_ ).

He found out that, if he stuffs himself in the morning, he won't have to pick up later meals. Breakfast (and a secret apple or two smuggled in his robe pockets) is enough for most days, and Breakfast is enough of the Great Hall for any day for sure. Morning students are the least attentive students. They would notice him much more eagerly around noon.

Just as well, in his free time, there is no serious need for him to occupy the Common Room they renovated solely for the few returning 8th Year Students; there's always the library to hide him, or the cover of a wayward alcove, or an abandoned classroom wherein his steps would be muffled by a crunching layer of war dust that has not yet been cleared away. Those hideouts do well enough until Madam Pince would lock up and Mrs. Norris could start sniffing after him – damned be that malicious cat, but there is yet another place for Draco Malfoy to go while his actual 8th Year bedroom remains unattained.

Too many faces that he doesn't want to face cross that door too closely. He wouldn't sleep there. Impossible.

But you see, Draco doesn't really need a proper bed – no, the makeshift bed he made himself from the rubble in the ruined Room Of Requirements will do just fine. No, he doesn't exactly have to think of _fire_ here; not when the air, although tasting like coal, is cold enough to make pale clouds from the huffs of his breath.

It's not like he needs to go and find the source of what sounds like a grumbling voice in the heart of the ruins, too - behind the hill of coal black chairs where he suspects a ghost, a pale cloud in the cold, what must be Vincent's ghost who wonders dimly why his fire went out.

(Draco _does_ need to hide under the old rag that somehow survived the flames. He does decidedly not need to wonder if it might be the curtain that he'd already hidden the Vanishing Cabinet under.

Surely not.

And it's not even warming him so much. He owes the thing no thought at all.)

Well, what he found since he returned to Hogwarts is also that it's always good to not be too warm. If you sweat less, you don't necessarily have to wash up that often, and if you do, a cat wash in Myrtles loo will suffice. No need to intrude the Common Showers, show up where you make yourself the most visible one can possibly be. See, Draco really doesn't need to put his body on display lest people get too excited to see that he had quite a bit of shit coming his way as well. The scars, ridiculously clichée giveaways to what he suffered, the scars on him are by far not all from Harry Potter, but from _Harry Potter_ of all rightful people. Imagine the uproar.

Draco absolutely doesn't need to ever draw Harry Potter's attention ever again.

He got a letter from mother today and presses it, her bitter love whafting around his temples, with shaking fingers to his heart. He doesn't need to hug her every day to know that she's alive. She is, what her letter has just proven, and was only yesterday, and will be tomorrow.


	5. Chapter 5

Ginny has Quidditch Practise on Saturday mornings. Harry has not.

He knows she'll be up early, and she knows that he'll be up late into the night. But she doesn't sleep until he's back, not even for Quidditch Practise anymore, and so help him Godrick, Harry knows that her building anger is what keeps her awake for him.

If only he could talk to her, then she would understand. But he doesn't open his mouth, not when her mouth is too hot on his like that. She's so mad at his spiralling, spiralling ignorance.

Behind his window pane now, banks of clouds roll like oil in a grey Saturday morning. Harry woke up alone and imagines now, as he lies on his side in a pillow that feels damp and cool to his temple, she must be a despairing beast on her broom like she was a beast on him, tangled in the struggle of their secluded night. Sighing, he rubs the sleep from his eyes and defeats himself yet again to get to his feet. His glasses don't improve his lazy eye-sight all that much today. He doesn't feel like looking at anything at all. Anything but maybe a late breakfast that others would call dinner instead. Yes, maybe that if nothing else. To eat is important, that's what life taught starving Harry Potter from the Cubboard Under The Stairs if nothing else.

In the middle of the entrance to the Great Hall that tragic draw pot is situated, and mechanically, without second thought to the action, Harry dumps his loose fist in its yawning kettle mouth as he passes. Every time a piece of parchment manages to touch a knuckle of two, he'll grab it to read with his meal; a sorry but effective excuse to brood over instead of doing conversation.

So someone's yet unread thought is touching him today. So Harry takes it in his hand and idly starts unfolding what sad crumb of private truth it might contain. For the blink of an eye he feels soft in his chest and barely grieving.

That is, until he halts in his step clumsily, his brow a confused scowl over his reading eyes. Why should his heart be seizing in his throat all of a sudden? Harry feels cold and hot in the nape of his neck; called out. He reads again. But that is curious indeed - that is the same stessful, long-lined handwriting he didn't know the first time. Just when he thinks he does, it reads:

_I hate myself because I shouldn't hate to stay with you._

Harry swallows thickly as a shameful flash of Ginny trickles down his spine not unlike helpless, angry tears shed on him in his sleep. Draco Sodding Malfoy couldn't possibly have worded out Harry's most intimate guilt like it was merely ink on paper?

With a thick racing in the blood, he steals a glance across the Hall, across the tables, across the few present heads – and only now, weeks into the school year, Harry realizes that it's weird he hasn't ever seen that idiot eat anything but breakfast lately. Malfoy's not there now. No, it's too late into the day for him to be around.

Where is he, though?

And why would Harry want to know?

His fingers tremble.

It's just, it's curious because that message doesn't add up at all. The first one was about Malfoy's father, Harry was sure of it. But this? There's no one that prick seems involved with anymore. Not anyone, now that Harry thinks about it hard enough. Whom would someone feel indebted to stay with, someone who's always alone? That won't add up, and Harry's brow furrows some more because he has to shake his head from looking frantically for that snow blond head which he knows isn't there.

_No._

After a moment, he feels sick and crumples up the insulting message in his hand as if he was deceived. Harry must have been mistaken. He must have fooled himself. Perhaps this handwriting is from another person altogether, and he only thought too much. Perhaps he doesn't know Malfoy at all.

And why should he want to?


	6. Chapter 6

There's ink staining his fingertips. Still dark like freshly spilled but already soaked fast into the skin, so much it won't rub off with just a bit of spit. That annoys him, and the taste of it on his tongue annoys him – Draco licks his lips, disgusted, and stops himself too late, afraid already that he might have smeared his lips as well now, and that on a Saturday of all days, because on Saturdays and Sundays Draco doesn't have a single spell in his probation wand to clean away the mess he made.

Did he have to touch a quill on a weekend anyway? And did his hand need to be shaking?

He scowls as he pulls from his robe pocket a green apple to scowl at, and with a loathing in his eyes that pleads direction despetarely he considers his apple, pointedly only the apple, and not his ink stained fingers gripping it. His grip is hard so that his hand won't shake. But it's too hard, and Draco's never been so good at violence without showing fear. He wills, in vain, for the shaking of his hand to stop.

To hell with it, though. More forcefully than the sour fruit would have demanded, he takes a bite. And chews, and swallows, awkwarly loud in the lonely stillness up this high.

Without proper flogging from the clouds and soothed by daylight, the topmost room of the Astronomy Tower appears to house him almost shyly. Draco for sure does feel shy about having come, as if he's not invited without lightning bolts. The floor looks softer, matter now, and Draco, still not very used to being here like that, soon stopped his mindless pacing that this place usually ticks off in his toes. The difference is, he can now clearly see his feet. And if he doesn't look, he can hear them all too well. And he doesn't want to admit to himself that he itches to run in hysterical circles each time -

He does not.

He can stop running any time he wants to. And he _can_ come here whenever he wants to. And he stands very still now, leaning against the wall opposite that cursed archway with the railing that's blown off and never let itself be fixed again.

Freakish.

Even in broad daylight, that archway spooks him silly if he gets too close to it. He wonders if it would repell him, or if he would it. Beyond, there's oily banks of clouds breaking open into rosier sky fields of a warm noon to come, yet Draco's breath shudders from his mouth like it only in winter should, and he casts his hostile eyes down as if down from authority.

The apple's sharp taste did nothing to make him untaste the ink which he tasted so uselessly.

_All for nothing._

With a shout, so sudden that he couldn't know he would be shouting, Draco throws his perfectly fine apple through the archway, down, down the whole high Astronomy Tower, right where forsaken Dumbledore fell, too – down from the rampart ledge, so comically quickly out of sight as if he only slid behind a paper cut and didn't even fall at all. Draco doesn't dare to go and watch his apple's long way down, he doesn't _care_ , because after it's out of sight it's good and gone, just gone under the edge, and who even cares what comes next?

An empty pocket is what. That was his only apple for today, and his arm that so smartly decided to throw it away slumps bonelessly to Draco's side, as if in physical afterthought, and his fist is so hard that it's shaking. Although, his pocket is not empty. The rustling of a letter makes itself be known again, and Draco could be sick.


	7. Chapter 7

Oh, but that apple could have hit him in the face. Harry nearly squeaked for how close the darned thing rushed past the crown of his invisible head – if not for the cloak, which flattens his stubborn nest of hair like only a weighty gush of rain could, Harry swears he would have felt the rocketing fruit breeze through the roots on his scalp - and what is even wrong with Malfoy, stupid ponce, shouting all of a sudden like that?

With his heart stuck square in his throat, wide eyed and scared furious, Harry sits by the abyss of his archway, glaring over his shoulder. Malfoy, glaring back at him and seeing not, stands for a heartbeat as if petrified.

Harry hadn't felt so hungry anymore and shamefully left the Great Hall after barely taking three steps in. He crept back to his bedroom to collect his cloak with fingers that were clammy and numb, and an unconsolable hole tugged at his guts. The stale air there still smelled of his and Ginny's upset sweat form the night before, and the upsetting anonymous message in his fist still stung where he tried to crush it to an insignificant paper ball.

But he was sorry, he was. And part of him ached to smooth the poor message down again with fingers tender and sure and sorry. There was a person behind these words, no matter what person in the end, and it was very obviously someone who needed his comfort, not his hate. Harry knows to be without comfort, he knows what that feels like.

He only wished he could caress Ginny the way she dreams of him to do.

But he'd indulge his guilty escape a little earlier today: The cloak couldn't fall over his body fast enough, the pull of it, the weighty material tiring the jitters out of his bones. Harry felt an urgency for peace and for his spot on the Astronomy Tower, it overpowered him with ease. There's nowhere he should be on weekends anyway, and so he went to be nowhere.

Then, though, as he climbed the final steps on spell-muffled feet, Harry found himself not greeted by the monumental, sunlit telescopes alone that would keep guard over their loner under his cloak again. Harry was met by a figure, standing stock-still and undecidedly in the room: Just a heartbeat there, when still that figure grew into Harry's view, he could have been mistaken for a trick of the light sparking down from the stargazer's window in the ceiling. Malfoy, in daylight so high up above the ground, his skin and hair ridiculously _shone_.

And it was odd, yes, that he should be on the Astronomy Tower where he normally only went when shadows crept with him. And it was normally so that only the grim taunts of a storm lured him out at all. And that he wasn't moving, _that_ , that should have made Harry alarmed.

But Harry was bitter with the other boy today, and, for the first time, he found his sanctuary intruded when he recognized him. That Harry was the one coming late had never happened before, and it felt to take his shy advantage away. He halted for a beat, forlorn. But he was still invisble, was he not? He was not even particularly here, so he could as well stay.

Without sparing him a glance, Harry passed his visitor, who, disconcertingly, was now his unaware host. The message still clamped in a fist, Harry just couldn't bring himself to give Malfoy the faintest fond thought today – he probably didn't deserve one. Harry, for sure, wouldn't know if he did.

So, unseen and unheard, Harry took sullenly to his favorite place, and he tried his best, he really did, to not mull over the actually unsettling quiet behind his back.

A few breaths later, breathing with the toyful winds that pulled on his cloak, Harry was almost calm. Behind him, Malfoy appeared just then to stop to be; he made little icky noises like he ate something nasty, smacked his lips irritatingly. Harry frowned, but he relaxed from the released tension all the same as he absentmindedly caressed the paper in his hand. Malfoy ate something now, really, something fresh and crunchy, loud and annoying. _That's right, he likes those green apples,_ Harry remembered and breathed -

And, well, then the shouting happened, and Harry startled a look over his shoulder, and the torpedo apple happened, too.

Had he not turned around in time, he would have taken the decicive screech of a boot heel on the floor too late for what it means: Draco Malfoy takes a sudden run towards the archway, and Harry, blood draining from his face, Harry knows that the absolute prick is going to jump.

A long forgotten, fierce will to survive kicks Harry into motion, because if he doesn't move now, and quick at that, he will be flung right off the tower alongside Malfoy. And he's suddenly so very, very _angry_. Harry didn't save that blasted idiot from burning alive so he could just - !

A lightning bolt splits the sky, Harry would swear it does; but there's no storm about. The air grows thick and heavy as with magic full, an expectation, and static has his hair on end.

As a blinding white flares around him, Harry scampers to his feet and throws himself with a big grunt head first into Malfoy's onstorming body, blindly tossing them both back into the room and as far away from the edge as he can – Malfoy's head hits the floor with an ugly thud which has him gasp in agony right into Harry's ear that skids along his face as they land in a heap. The stem of Harry's glasses caught and tore itself free on the way, from what he has no clue. Harry's foot slid on a fold of his cloak and unveiled him. A wheezing sob comes wet and hot from Malfoy's mouth, hits Harry's scar and blows through his hair. Harry blinks his eyes hard and groans, but the light, so violent for a moment, seems ordinary once again. He can see clearly with just a few hysterical sparks lining his vision. A shattered heartbeat later he feels his open mouth brushing a cheek and feels a puffy lip squished to his temple. Teeth, too. And lashes catch the tip of a nose. And fingers dig into a collar, knuckles press into that neck, the hammering pulse beneath. Bewildering, small touches, twitching, bone and skin; They prick as if electric. Harry groans again and tries to move, he tries, but God, the world is shaking and gravity much stronger than him.

When he comes to with a jolt, he jumps from the pile of limbs that is Malfoy who lay jabbed underneath him. His side is thumping with pain now that he dislodged a sharp kneecap from under his ribs. Harry nearly buckles up in pain as he starts barking:

“What the FUCK, Malfoy? What was that supposed to be? Just _what_ the”, his chest is heaving now, he's panting and wipes and _wipes_ his stubborn hair out of his face. There's spit and blood on his temple and the stem of his glasses. It's on Malfoy's mouth as well. “What the actual bloody _fuck_ , you stupid ponce!”

Shell-shocked, Malfoy sprawls on the floor and takes Harry's rant in like someone who hasn't been directly spoken to in too much time. Adrenaline has blown his pupils wide. He gawks up at Harry like a Muggle seeing his first ghost, but he looks like one himself, paled and shushed by disbelief. Careful not to give his head a too sudden shake, he props his weight onto his elbows gingerly. But when his face grows pink without warning and he grits his reddened teeth at Harry, Malfoy makes it more than clear that the absurd situation has sunk in to him after all. A little droplet of blood quivers from his shaking chin onto the crisp white of his rumpled collar.

He cannot know where Harry came from, not like he popped out of thin air. But does that even matter now?

Coughing a breathless grunt, Malfoy struggles to his feet with knife-sharp hatred watering his eyes. His voice can only break under the fierce outrage of his words: “Are you _kidding_ me, Potter?! I'll NEVER have the guts a second time!”

That stated like a dreadful, rightful accusation, Malfoy runs both hands through his hair and pulls, frustrated, cursing, before he turns on his heels and flees from Harry down the stairs, his hair and clothes a mess as if he'd actually done the leap for the tearing wind instead of saving arms - that were so terrible to him, it seems.

Hitching a breath, Harry processes too late that someone who just tried a suicide should not be left to run off on their own like that, and he shouts after Malfoy's billowing robe to _wait on him,_ but as he sets a step ahead, pain seizes in his body suddenly, and gasping, Harry saggs onto his knees.

Malfoy's feet, if possible, are echoing away from Harry in an even wilder speed as they hunt down the distance. If he went on like this, he'd fly. And Harry can't stand up.

_Fuck._

He knows he should send a Patronus. Dimly, his common sense screams not to abandon this and do the right thing. But his hands, as if somewhen liquid metal crept into his veins, his hands don't want to move at all.

Something far heavier than Harry's personal apathy, that which he's used to carry around, something much _more_ than that drags him and drags, until, distressed and with droopy eyes, he finds himself rolled up on the floor.

Suddenly, Harry doesn't feel very good. He doesn't feel as much as himself. He's terrified, but he finds he doesn't even care. Something is off. He knows that something's really off, only, he doesn't want to care.

All that he manages is to reach out a feeble arm and grab the corner of his cloak. He pulls it in exhausting labour over himself; that much he still can do, no more, though, no. Never again.

With his Invisibility Cloak, Harry unintentionally manages to pull another item to himself as well; Malfoy must have lost that letter when they hit the ground. It's fallen open, the wax seal broken off in their scuffle very likely, and like a slowly dying insect, the paper now unfolds itself. Harry can just so read it from where his head, unmoving like a spent canon ball, rests. Written in a careful, long-lined hand, the letter speaks to

_Mother,_

and it lies of things that surely cannot be: Harry knows for sure, no one is friends with Malfoy anymore. He knows that he himself is not. And, if he thinks about it hard enough, Harry also can't remember Malfoy excelling in any class at all, not anymore. The letter lies and tells in this excruciatingly proper hand that

_All is well,_

_your loving son_

Harry goes to sleep.


	8. Chapter 8

Being a good runner, as stated before, Draco hasn't run so hard that he should actually run out of breath in what feels like a lifetime (or like only the blink of an eye away from last night that could as well have been _that night,_ all these nights away), and while his legs just crashed to a stop, buckling under him in the middle of a Dungeon hallway, Draco's trampling heart never did.

On his hands and knees he swallows each breath with a yelp, the taste of iron enclosing his tongue in a layer thick as threat. His bangs remain matted to his forehead, heavy on his racing thoughts, even as his head lolls uselessly between his elbows. Shirt and slacks cling to the fever on his skin as though attacking. _Hands on him._ Where did his outer robes go? He had them on, this morning. He doesn't have them now. Invaded so, Draco breathes harder still, only he cannot seem to simply _breathe_.

But there's no one down here. Not a single weekend student out about, not even Filch, not in this humid corner of the castle bowels. Draco's alone with only the wheezing of his own throat that echoes from the cobbled walls. He shoots a manic glance between his thighs that shake with tremors; no one behind him, at his heels, on his trail, no one to catch him by the ancle, yank him by the sweaty hair, drag him across the floor -

And he _knows_ his robes might have caught on the rusty pike of an armor he passed in his hurry, he doesn't put it beyond himself that he would have flailed his way out of them, _ripped_ , not gripped, but his head starts spinning, so he shakes it. Too much blood hanging in there, banging his swollen brain – oh shit, he hit his stupid head, he remembers and hates - and it all seems to want to flood from the pressure of his bleeding lip. Disgusted, Draco spits. Iron, iron, and the air, it should be colder down here. His lungs are so hot he thinks he smells fire and wants to decide against it, somehow. No need to think of fire under a giant ass lake of all places. Pathetic.

But … did Harry Potter just _pling_ out of thin air?

And did Draco really – no - did he _really_ \- ?

He fucking did. Or rather, he didn't because Harry Potter plung out of thin air just when Draco tried to jump off the godforsaken Astronomy Tower.

_Oh my god, Father. Mother._

His tears drip the wrong way from his upper lashes to the floor, upside down, the world all upside down. His cheeks stay dry, split with the harsher grin of disbelief.

Didn't Draco write that letter anyway, to mother and himself, to tell that he could carry on, he would, because in his blood and his ignorance and his guileful luck Draco has everything he needs to carry on the name of bood too old to die with him? He did survive the war. He should survive himself. This, for whatever it's worth, this he was raised for.

But mother's letters never tell him if she even wept when father died, or if she raged when they lost the manor. The burial grounds. And father's eyes never shone as brightly with pride as did the wood of his cane, and Draco, shamefully, sometimes hated him for that.

He tried to jump from the goddamn tower, to be rid of it all with his tail between his legs. The indignity in this is massive enough to make his vision blur. Coughing, Draco needs an excuse, any reason to not die of absolute worthlessness on this very spot -

And you see, there's always Potter; he couldn't have just _materialized_ like a fruit fly. There is no Apparition possible on the Hogwarts grounds, oh no, not even for sweet Golden Boy, and he wasn't _there -_ until he was. And that weird light Draco thought he saw, that unease he felt, a spell, a magic that he thought would hit him like a bull's head - had not Potter's hit him first. If it even did. Draco might have imagined … and maybe he didn't - he could just be losing it, perhaps. But he doesn't know what would be worse.

Distressed, Draco claws at the stone floor and he breaks two nails, but he already lost his fight against irrationality. He sucks his puffy lip – pain, blood, the taste of blood. He didn't split his lip on a hallucination. Where did he split his lip? Nothing is making any sense right now, and Draco, with his wheezing breath, is terrified.

His feet skid on the moist layer of dust covering the Dungeon hallways and he's up again. Draco doesn't really need to stop when all his heartbeat shouts is _run_.


	9. Chapter 9

This is one nasty Monday morning, and classes haven't even begun.

Of that, at least, Ron is convinced when the first glimpse of Ginny hits him like a steaming train: She rushes into the Great Hall, eyes as red as dusk that fought off nightfall for too long. Ron's chest clenches. His fists go slack on both sides of his plate, and fork and knife clank unused back to where he only just picked them up from. There goes his appetite.

He's seen this kind of face one time too often now. First on Mum, now on Ginny, too, and God knows Ron's had enough of it. He doesn't even jump when she's behind him, fully expecting her hand to dart over his shoulder, her arm as wicked as a whip as she grabs a random boiled egg off his plate like it wronged her and never made up. This, and nothing else, shall be her breakfast today, because nothing else is closer to Ron, and she needs _someone_ close now, even though of course she's too stubborn to stay. No seat can hold her in this mood, like she's too busy to sit down. Ron knows that bustling, too, from Mum. The Burrow's never been as tidy as when George had stopped to smile.

On a whim, Ron grabs her wrist before she can escape. He takes a weighty breath to steady himself. Between all his older sibling and Ginny, somehow he never really learned how to be a big brother himself. But right now in Hogwarts he is her only brother left.

“ _Gin_.”

He doesn't even need to say _Is it Harry again?_ Because it's always Harry. Sleeping in again, too, missing classes, skipping meals. It really isn't fair – the war is won and yet the problem's still and always kind of Harry, and it never stops to put Ron in such complicated situations. How shall he know for whom to worry first this time?

Ginny whirls on him, and tears brim in her eyes. Around a lump of sobs stuck in her throat she hisses as though the whole school had not already caught up on her broken heart:

“You know, he doesn't even have the balls to dump me! Fine, but I'm fucking _done_. I won't wait another _second_ for him when he doesn't want me to!”

So she breaks free. Ron's palm feels numb where he let her.

Hermione, beside him, itches with her whole tight body now to follow Ginny, knowing though too well it wouldn't help, not anymore, so she lets out a sigh distressed into the cover of her hands. Her voice is small inside there. She sounds as if she made a grave miscalculation.

“Ginny's right. We're giving him a little _too_ much time to come around.”

Exhausted, Ron starts to rub his temple.

“Soon as we catch him he'll be in for a talk.”

But then it's only an hour until curfew and no one's caught a whiff of Harry whatsoever because, apparently, Harry managed to go missing on the weekend and no one even noticed.

In the Gryffindor common room, mostly vacant now, where Ron and Hermione went to seek out a pouting Ginny finally unwilling to sneak into their 8th year quarters, Ron worries his lip awkwardly as he paces in front of the familiar fire place, not ready at all to confront his sister about her and his best friend's _sleeping habits_ of all things. Hermione, the flames making shadow chase light on her face, presses once again: “So, you've been sleeping in his room, and you haven't seen him since Saturday?”

“Before Quidditch practise”, adds Ron to complete what they already know.

Ginny, lost in a large sofa's scarlet cushionings, pulls her arms tighter around her knees as if to cover up a wound in her chest. She shakes her head.

“He's been out late a lot. I thought he, well he was avoiding me. I just thought that was the finish of it.”

“And he did _not_ ”, Ron emphasizes, “crash on _my_ floor, or anyone's. You could have asked me, y'know.”

Ginny does know, and the harsh sound of self-reproach she barely swallows down tells him as much. Ron winces.

“He would've sent a Patronus though. If something went wrong.”

“If he still _could_. Or if he … wanted to. Maybe he didn't.”

“ _Gin_.”

He comes to stand behind her and kneads her shoulders, maybe too hard, hoping they stop shake. He won't allow his own to start.

“Alright. So no one's seen him for three days and two nights. His cloak is gone. He has no Trace, and we agreed he shouldn't bring the Map to Hogwarts. How do we find him?”

A painful heartbeat ticks by, and the coming night seems much too hollow and unsure.

Hermione takes a deep breath bordering on a panicked whine, but this is the moment to confess if any: She never meant to breach anyone's privacy, however, times have taught this young, smart witch to always be prepared. She only wishes now she had not trusted Harry with his healing on his own so long. Where she would choose respect, maybe control would have been due. Oh no, she doesn't _know_ , but in a rush she straightens up rod-straight on all her failed responsibility.

“ _I_ brought the Map.”


	10. Chapter 10

It is around that time when, indifferent to Draco's aggravated mind, Ronald Weasley trips over the invisible hump that is Harry Potter sleeping on the floor of the Astronomy Tower. Around that time when Hermione Granger notices the infamous railing to be fixed again, mysteriously, and an abandoned letter that, against the pulling winds, clings fiercely to one of the railing's metal braces by such doubtful a chance it should have been magic. Just when Ginevra Weasley kneels beside her hero boy with dread and hope dripping from her eyes, dread and hope that maybe, all this time, he's only been drawn into the call of some unfathomable curse and not, not all this time, away from her at all.

It is when Harry Potter is not responsive to his surroundings anymore, shake his shoulders as they may.

Through the nightly vast corridors of the castle swims the winding body of an otter swift, as bright as light, and Draco hides in a cubicle of Myrtle's loo.

“You're _dying_ , sweetie”, she unhelpfully whines from outside, maybe wishful that really he would. Draco, propped awkwardly with forearm, fist and brow against the wall, stands panting down into the abyss of the toilet, and he groans as his other fist, mechanically, _works_. His spine is solid as were father's cane and reputation to the bitter end.

Myrtle doesn't have a clue: She died too soon to hear the difference between a boy that's sick and a man that wanks himself raw.

Fuck though, his feet are killing him. As he resumes his detached pumping undeterred, Draco shifts his shoes on the tiles, _squeak_ , and his feet in them sting, hot with sweat and sore. From this stiff adjustment his trousers ride down to his ankles so suddenly that for a breath he remembers the sickly voice of Greyback calling him handsome. A sob bubbles in the back of Draco's throat, but only night air slaps the goose flesh on his ass. No, Draco's _got_ this. He controls.

When a jolt unpleasant but enough brings him up on his toes, his eyes clench shut: The pressure seizes in his guts. Draco wrings down on his cock once more, hard and slow, and damn it if the rash from his dry palm isn't painful. It's helping, though. He's learned that it could help him pull it off.

With cheeks pink and lips pale, he mouths a silent moan.

This time there isn't much he'd aim at the bowl for, but the colorless droplets that froth from him will do as witness to the work he's done. After, he frantically wipes himself with scratchy toilet paper – not like he'd vanish spunk with a probation wand that might record each little thing it does – then his fingers go directly to his throat and find his pulse: Hammerfall hunts hammerfall. It should go down.

This old trick's switched him off on cue often enough, and by tonight Draco is desperate to switch off. Two nights might be his nerves, but three make it a habit that he can't afford: Aside from every luxury he's learned to live without, what Draco knows he needs, indisputably, is sleep.

He presses his fingers deeper into his throat, swallows and only grants himself to breathe with each tenth hammerfall he counts.

Now the shivers come, but he's still too hot in his skin. He thinks the stall might shrink around him, just a bit, and sweat breaks out on his temples. On the edge of his perception, Myrtle tries to sound agrieved by his demise that, as she loudly proclaims, she could not detain.

“Myrtle, will you SHUT it!”

Draco's ears ring with the gallop of his blood,

_please,_

and he stands with shaking legs and his trousers all the way down around his ankles. A minute, ten minutes pass. His cock hangs red and soft and doesn't ever want to be touched again. Black sparks flicker in and out of his vision. He blinks to ward them off; treacherous blindness that couldn't overwhelm his churning thoughts.

If only it would. But Draco's pulse doesn't go down.

He bends to grab his pants. His head starts pounding once again, just where it hit the floor on Saturday, and surely only because of that annoyance can't he really help the sobs that shake his drooping shoulders then.


End file.
